US Politics |OT|

[Jumpin]

All this xenophobia in the US, with justifications for dehumanization that range from motte and bailey arguments to utter bullshit like "gotta protect the borders", "they're illegals", to "they broke the law by coming here"  reminds me of Babylon 5. A show I'm rewatching now, just kind of in the background while I work since I've seen it several times.

For those unfamiliar, a bit of background information: the story was written years before it first aired, during the mid-1980s (the show aired in the 1990s). The setting: a city-sized space station where the different civilizations of the galaxy set up a sort of galactic UN with the main characters being the government of the station and the ambassadors... but, much like a terrestrial city, there is commerce, trade, entertainment, amenities, and other activity occurring among its residents. It was the originator of the sci-fi formula where they began as an episodic show to introduce the universe before moving into a full scale novel arc drama (Stargate and Farscape also did this) - with B5, the episodic phase was all of season 1 except the final episodes - the main arc went until the end of season 4, and season 5 was the epilogue/appendices. The themes of the show are embedded among the "younger races" (which include humans) stuck between an ancient war millions of years old between vastly more powerful ancient species, the Vorlon on one side and the Shadows on the other → the story is largely based on JRR Tolkien's works, especially The Silmarillion, and several events are replayed from that book in the show, and as you can guess Shadows = the shadow/Morgoth, and Vorlons = Valar. However, historical themes also come into play, as the Shadows and Vorlons are also reminiscent of the first and second worlds during the Cold War, while the younger races are the third world that the first and second world fought over. Also, among the younger races was the rise of their own unique forms of fascism.

One season 1 episodic episode featured some archaeologists smuggling aboard mysterious alien technology from a tomb-world whose species died out a long time ago. As the episode progresses, it becomes clear that the technology was an artificial bio-AI powered weapon which was programmed to kill the non-pure people on the planet. But, the whole scientific racism was ideological based rather than scientific, and because of genetic drift there were no "pure" ones among the species, and never were. The weapon wiped out the entire species.

Anyway, after the main conflict of the episode was resolved, the following exchange occurred between two of the main characters after reflection on the situation, which very much resembles the Nazi ideology from 200 years prior:

Commander Susan Ivanova: "Santayana: 'Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' "

...

Security Chief Garibaldi: "Back home there's a growing pro-Earth movement. Rumors of hate groups targeting aliens. And on all sides, the fanatics. They think society has to be protected against anyone who's different. I'm starting to wonder if what we just saw is a preview of things to come? I can't believe we'd be that foolish."

Commander Ivanova: "It seems no one reads Santayana anymore. If you'll excuse me. If you need me, I'll be over there, getting drunk with the rest of the aliens."

I don't know, I love that last line.